Benzion Netanyahu, who died Monday in Jerusalem at the age of 102,
has been widely scrutinzed this week for his myriad contributions to
the history of Zionism in Israel and the United States. Yet arguably
the most important one has been overlooked. After World War II,
Benzion Netanyahu, along with Irgun activist Peter Bergson, nephew of
Mandatory Palestine Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and liberal
American Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, drafted an article for inclusion in
the United Nations Charter that could yet save the Jewish state.

The article became known as the “Palestine clause” for the protection
it afforded to the right of Jewish settlement throughout the Land of
Israel west of the Jordan River. Article 80 extended the guarantees
to Jews afforded by the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
following World War I. The Mandate had recognized “the historical
connection of the Jewish people with Palestine” and “the legitimacy
of grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”
Jews were guaranteed “the right of close settlement” throughout
Palestine.

But where was “Palestine”? According to the Mandate, it comprised the
land east and west of the Jordan River, stretching from Iraq to the
Mediterranean. Jewish settlement rights in Palestine were limited
only in one respect: Great Britain, the Mandatory Trustee, was
empowered to “postpone” or “withhold” the right of Jews to settle
east — but not west — of the Jordan River. To reward the Hashemite
sheikh, Abdullah, for his wartime assistance, the British colonial
secretary, Winston Churchill, removed the land east of the river,
comprising three-quarters of Mandatory Palestine, to create the
kingdom of Trans-Jordan.

No Jews would be permitted to settle there, but the internationally
guaranteed right of Jewish settlement throughout truncated Palestine
west of the river was preserved. It was that right that Article 80
secured after the expiration of the League of Nations. It explicitly
protected the rights of “any peoples” and “the terms of existing
international instruments to which members of the United Nations may
respectively be parties.” The “Palestine clause” thereby guaranteed
to Jews the right of “close settlement” throughout their remaining
land west of the Jordan River, as the League Mandate had done.

With their careful draftsmanship Benzion Netanyahu, Peter Bergson,
and Rabbi Wise extended League of Nations guarantees and secured
United Nations authorization for Jewish settlement throughout the
biblical homeland of the Jewish people. The legal right of Jewish
settlement, except in the land siphoned off from Palestine as Trans-
Jordan in 1922, has never been abrogated. Persistent efforts to
undermine the legitimacy of settlements, according to international
legal expert Julius Stone, have been nothing less than
the “subversion . . . of basic international law principles.”

Article 80 was unaffected by the Six-Day War, which obliterated
Jordanian control over Judea and Samaria (its “West Bank”). According
to Security Council Resolution 242, Israel was permitted to
administer that land until “a just and lasting peace in the Middle
East was secured.” That has not yet happened, to be sure, but even
then, Israel would only be required, under its carefully drafted
language, to withdraw its armed forces — civilians were not
mentioned — from “territories,” not from “the territories” or “all
the territories.”

The “Jewish right of settlement,” according to Eugene V. Rostow, then
America’s state undersecretary political affairs, “is equivalent in
every way to the right of the existing [Palestinian] population to
live there.”

Article 80 has never been repealed. But Benzion Netanyahu’s son,
Prime Minister Netanyahu, seems inclined to disregard it. During his
first term he signed the Hebron Protocol, confining 600 Jewish
residents to a tiny ghetto in their ancient holy city. His critics
may insist that he remains under the influence of his father’s right-
wing dogmatism. But abundant evidence suggests otherwise, which is no
doubt why his father often expressed concern that he son wasn’t tough
enough to serve as prime minister.

Benzion Netanyahu helped to write the fundamental principle of
Zionism, the right of Jewish settlement throughout the Land of
Israel, into the United Nations Charter. How sadly ironic it would be
if Benjamin Netanyahu, whose graveside eulogy paid loving tribute to
his father’s great gift to his sons of “a sense of responsibility to
our nation,” surrenders the land that his father tried with
passionate determination and perseverance to preserve for the Jewish
people.

Mr. Auerbach, professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, is
the author of “Hebron Jews,” “Brothers at War” and, just
published, “Against the Grain: A Historian’s Journey” (Quid Pro
Books).